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Hulk
*1/2
Cinema
Reviews - Week of July 22, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12A. USA.
138 minutes. Directed by Ang Lee. Produced by Avi Arad, Larry J. Franco,
Gale Anne Hurd, James Schamus. Written by Michael France, James Schamus,
John Turman; based on the Marvel comic book by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee. Starring
Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott, Josh Lucas, Nick Nolte, Paul Kersey,
Cara Buono, Todd Tesen, Kevin O. Rankin.
I was a huge childhood fan of the "Incredible
Hulk" TV show, with Bill Bixby as David Banner and Lou Ferrigno as Hulk.
It was fun, even sort of touching, watching a good-hearted scientist named
David trying to keep his head down, but not being able to fight the urge
to turn into a big green monster that beat up the bad guys. At the end of
it all, of course, he would turn back into a human to tut-tut over his own
rage and tie up every episode with kindly deeds.
Ang Lee's "Hulk" was never going
to be the same thing; we've been told for ages that this movie would be arty
first and action as a by-product, a dark meditation on the nature of David
Banner's eternal dilemma from a sober and psychological perspective. The
problem is not simply that it fails at going deep and meaningful, but that
it hardly tries. It's long, all right -- two hours and twenty minutes --
and yet the time isn't spent on tortured dilemmas or offbeat chapters of
insight. We get everything you'd expect from a summer science fiction flick,
drawn out, lingered on and dressed up with bad special effects. It's more
like a rough cut than a release.
My opinion is in the minority. "Hulk" is getting
good reviews, which go on about how it probes into the psyche of the main
character, and delves into issues of genetic engineering, and yada yada yada.
Staggering out of the movie relieved that it was over and perplexed that
so many people could have positive reactions, I fired off a couple of cellphone
messages, hoping some responses would click things into perspective. My buddy
Kenny liked it, because, "The character's battle with power was the paramount
theme of the comic. His dad's attitude highlights Hulk's. Maybe I'm just
fishing for justification caus--" … and then the third part of his text
message didn't come through, but I get the feeling he was starting to own
up to the truth.
Dunno about everyone else, but what I saw was
a movie where a bloody long backstory about military science labs worked
itself into the story of David Banner (Eric Bana), whose new contraption
in the lab goes wrong, zaps him, does something all nutty with his genes
and turns him into a big green monster who goes around stomping on things.
The green guy has a life of its own, but gets a King Kong sentimental streak
whenever he sees Bruce's girl Betty (Jennifer Connelly). And there's a lot
of stuff about the military trying to get the green thing under control and
capture its DNA to make invincible soldiers. The bare bones of this, I don't
have a problem with. But why does it take so long to unfold when it's so
simple, and why is everyone imbuing it with significance it doesn't
have?
Where's the depth? What am I missing? There's
no big dilemma of identity here -- right, I get it, Bruce is cursed by his
genes, and can't control the monster he turns into, but the movie doesn't
explain that beyond the words of this sentence. Nick Nolte plays Banner's
father, the discredited scientist whose experiments are the reason for his
son's unique existence, and who has become mesmerised with possibilities
for what could be done with the monster. Do his devilish desires, as Kenny
suggests, mirror the secret yearnings of Bruce himself? Not from anything
the movie tells us. The Banner character is less in moral turmoil than exhausted
and stressed, what with finding his body mutated and being thrown into cages
by suits from the military industrial complex. "When I can't fight it anymore,
when it takes over, when I totally lose control... I like it," he confesses
at one point, but it seems more like a throwaway line than anything that's
backed up by the material.
Every now and again the movie critics of our world
are taken over by a surge of insanity, where they see things that aren't
there and praise elements that are unworkable. This is one of those times.
"Hulk" is even scoring praise for it style, which uses split-screens in inventive
ways, dotting them in odd places about the screen, or sometimes pulling back
from them to reveal whole grids of images telling stories, which in turn
get zoomed in on as we move to the next scene. It's supposed to resemble
the layout of a comic book, and on that basic level, it's cute. But does
it help the storytelling? Sometimes there are multiple angles of the same
thing, sometimes the split-screen shows reaction shots, other times it just
looks like comic pages for the sake of it. There's nothing within this gimmick
that couldn't have been done with regular cutting; rather than communicating
freely, the style draws attention to itself.
I get the feeling that "Hulk" was made by people
who keep overhearing from fanboys how comic books are supposed to be really
inventive and full of meaning, and respect that point of view, but don't
actually get it. The comic imagery is tacked on, as is an incongruous cameo
by Stan Lee, who I think is the only person in the movie to crack a smile.
"Spider-Man" and "Pulp Fiction" are movies packed with the imagery of geek
culture and rehashed with cinematic energy and joy -- Sam Raimi and Quentin
Tarantino are filmmakers with their roots in this kind of thing; they understand
it instinctively. I'm just not getting that vibe from Ang Lee. One of his
best works is "The Ice Storm", that darkly comic and poignant critique of
the American middle-class, and he has said time and again that there his
Chinese origin helped his approach, giving him the clear viewpoint of an
unblemished outsider. It doesn't work here; he struggles to connect with
the material, and it ends up being an exercise.
I've hardly mentioned the special effects. Put
that down to an unwillingness to dwell on misery.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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